Police
have deployed water cannon during a rally against the controversial
UN migration pact in Brussels. Officers were seen scuffling with
protesters, who threw firecrackers before facing off with
law-enforcement.
The
rally was dubbed the ‘March against Marrakech’ in reference to
the city where the pact was signed earlier in December. It was
organized by the right-wing Vlaams Belang party which has long been a
vocal opponent of the agreement.
While
having initially kicked off peacefully, the demonstration started to
heat up with some of the participants burning firecrackers and
hurling bottles as they marched down the street.
Part
of the crowd who rallied on Sunday, also vented their anger by
rooting out and throwing around traffic signs and what appeared to be
parts of some fences.
Riot
police marched out in full riot gear to quell the unease. They later
moved in with water cannon against some of the protesters.
At
least two of them were seen being sprayed with water cannon right in
their faces. It is not known whether any serious injuries have been
caused by the hit.
One
of the videos from the unrest shows how a chain of riot police sprint
towards a small group of people (presumably demonstrators). Just
moments later at least two of them are being encircled by the riot
officers and beaten with batons. A male also gets a direct pepper
spray hit in the face from the closest range. After walking just a
few meters – apparently completely disoriented – he then
collapses on the pavement, with police running past him.
Police said that
at least 5,000 have gathered in the Belgian capital. "What
you see is people are indeed afraid, but who have been told that
their loss of social security, of jobs, is to be blamed on migrants
and not on the big financial companies," Lode
Vanoost, former deputy speaker of the Belgian parliament, told
RT. "The
problem is there. Nobody is going to deny that the problem exists but
among other problems, it is not even the biggest problem that the
people are faced with at the moment."
A
separate counter-demonstration of around 1,000 people, organised by
left-wing groups and non-governmental organisations, also took place
in the city centre.
The
UN-backed pact promoting an international approach to safe and
orderly migration was formally approved in Marrakech, Morocco earlier
in December. The accord split global powers, with Austria, Hungary,
the US, Israel and several other countries rejecting the pact. Its
critics claim that the deal is inadequate for managing global
migration flows.
The
Belgian government suffered a blow after the center-right New Flemish
Alliance (N-VA) quit the ruling coalition because of its disapproval
of the accord. Prime Minister Charles Michel announced that his
government was set to continue as a minority.
BRUSSELS
IN FLAMES: French riots spread to Belgium - HUNDREDS go on rampage at
home of EU
BELGIAN
police used water cannons and deployed tear gas in central Brussels
to drive back protesters inspired by France's "yellow vest"
anti-tax movement as demonstrators forced the European Commission
headquarters into a temporary lockdown
Hundreds
of activists made Belgium’s political landmarks their target,
marching between landmarks amid clouds of smoke from firecrackers and
smoke bombs, as they were stalked by dozens of baton-wielding riot
officers ready to pounce. Protesters descended on the European
Commission’s Berlaymont headquarters, the heart of EU
decision-making, as they created Belgium’s own ‘yellow jacket’
campaign against rising fuel prices and the cost of living. The EU
Commission was forced to temporarily shut its doors as the building’s
security guards refused to let anyone in or out while protesters
marched passed.
A
lone ‘yellow jacket’ remained stationed outside the bolted doors,
insisting the Berlaymont was now “closed for the day”.
Another
protester, who wanted to remain anonymous amid scenes of violence,
told Express.co.uk: “We are protesting against the raising cost of
petrol, living and high tax.
“It’s
the same as France and Paris and maybe later on in Holland and maybe
in England.”
At
least two police vans were destroyed in what started as a peaceful
but unauthorised demonstration descended into violence.
Police
made dozens of arrests after protestors with their faces covered by
masks or hoods tried to storm through police lines.
Brussels
riots: Tear gas was fired at protestors after violence
erupted (Image:
REUTERS•EPA)
At
least two police vans were destroyed in the protests (Image:
JOE BARNES)
Belgium’s
‘yellow jacket’ movement are hoping to inspire similar scenes
across Europe, with London a particular hotspot for potential
violence.
They
use social media to spread their message, and claim to have already
had their Facebook event page shut down for the Brussels march.
Riot
police came under attack by a small breakaway faction as they
dispersed peaceful ‘yellow jackets’ away from the EU Commission’s
headquarters.
A
dozen youths, dressed in black hoodies without the high visibility
jackets, launched rocks at the police who proceeded to give chase
down a side street.
Dozens
of protestors were arrested (Image:
REUTERS)
Police
used water cannons to disperse demonstrators (Image:
GETTY IMAGES)
Shop
owners ran to their doors amid fears they could become innocent
victims of clashes between police and the mob.
Peaceful
protesters continued on their march away from the Commission with
their hands held aloft above their heads as they passed awaiting riot
police.
Several
hundred people eventually converged on the office of Prime Minister
Charles Michel.
Crowds
demanded the resignation of the PM as they chanted "Michel,
resign!"
Mr
Michel is a liberal ally of Macron, who voiced sympathy for people's
troubles on Thursday. But he added: "Money doesn't fall from the
sky."
His
centre-right coalition faces an election in May.
The
European Commission building was forced to temporarily shut its
doors (Image: JOE BARNES)
Police
said around 500 protestors took part in the demonstrations (Image:
JOE BARNES)
A
tweet from the Belgian leader said: "No impunity for
unacceptable violence in Brussels. Those who came to smash and loot
must be punished."
Protests
in Belgium, notably around fuel depots in the French-speaking south,
have been inspired by the yellow vest - or "gilet jaune"
- actions in France.
Brussels
Attack False Flag Theories Explored with Sibel Edmonds & Kevin
Barrett
Was
Brussels a false flag terror attack that has been blamed on ISIS by
Europe, the US, and Israel? We explore the familiar playbook of the
“terrorists” in Belgium, connect the dots with Paris, 9/11, and
Operation Gladio in this uncensored discussion with Sibel Edmonds and
Kevin Barrett. How has the target on Syria and Assad allowed for
acceptable civilian casualties in Europe, and what threat does ISIS
really hold? Enter the Buzzsaw with Sean Stone and find out.
GUEST
BIO:
Sibel
Edmonds is
editor and publisher of Boiling Frogs Post, founder and president of
the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition (NSWBC), and author of
the acclaimed book Classified Woman: The Sibel Edmonds Story, and a
Political Spy Thriller, The Lone Gladio. She has appeared on national
radio and TV as a commentator on matters related to whistleblowers,
national security, and excessive secrecy & classification, and
has been featured on CBS 60 Minutes, CNN, MSNBC, NPR, and in the New
York Times, Washington Post, Vanity Fair, The American Conservative,
and others.
Kevin
Barrett is
the author of Questioning the War on Terror: A Primer for Obama
Voters; Truth Jihad; A Guide to Mysterious San Francisco; and editor
of 9/11 and American Empire v.2, and has taught Arabic, Islamic
Studies, French, American Civilization and others subjects. Widely
regarded as the world's leading Muslim 9/11 truth activist (for what
that's worth) he spent 2006-2008 as the only talk show host featured
on all three leading patriot radio networks (GCN, RBN, and WTPRN).
Garrett ran for Congress in Wisconsin's 3rd District in 2008.
Probable Cause with Sibel Edmonds- Belgium Bombing: The Missing Context, Facts & Interests
This
is a brief presentation on several important angles and facts on the
recent bombings in Belgium. As always, the deep-state-mouth-piece
media is presenting the entire incident with twists and omissions, so
I am going to bring up at least a few things quickly here, and later,
follow up with more in-depth analyses. There are, and will be, lots
to discuss and analyze on this latest Operation Gladio B synthetic
terror event. Also, keep in mind, what will take place afterwards,
whether it is expanding the existing wars or starting new ones,
whether it is furthering police state practices, is equally if not
more important than the bombing itself.
Probable Cause with Sibel Edmonds- Belgium Bombing: All the Gladio’s Protected Terror Men
This
is a follow-up to our previous overview of the recent Belgium Bombing
carrying every single hallmark of Operation Gladio B. I present one
of the common trademarks present in all Gladio B synthetic terror
operations since 9/11, and illustrate how Gladio’s terror
operations always come with multiple forewarnings, and how, despite
all the scripted and on-the-record forewarnings, the operatives are
allowed to travel, communicate, and execute the intended and
synthetically-created terror plots.
There
will be more to discuss and analyze on this latest Operation Gladio B
synthetic terror event. In our next episode I’ll be looking at what
has already been taking place since the execution of the plot, which
objectives are being pushed, and who benefits from it all.
Probable Cause with Sibel Edmonds- False Flag Ops, the Morning After & the Profiteers
Erdogan
Is Prime Suspect in March 22 Brussels Bombing
He
Had Threatened Belgium with Terror Assault in March 18 Speech
Protesting Pro-Kurdish Demonstration in Belgian Capital; “The
Snakes You Are Sleeping with Can Bite You Any Time,” Raved Erdogan
to Belgian Government; Turkish Strong Man Also Implicated in November
13 Paris Massacre; Trump-Cruz Feuds Continue Mutually Assured
Destruction of GOP; Row Shows It’s Easy to Get Trump’s Goat;
Trump’s Vote Percentage in GOP Primaries and Caucuses Still Below
40%; More Republicans Brand Him As Fascist
On
the morning of the Brussels bombings of March 22, 2016, The Star (a
Turkish newspaper which functions as the semi-official news organ
of the Turkish dictator) headline with the accusation: “Belgium A
Terrorist State” Pictures showed Kurdish flags with accusations
that Belgium was supporting what The Star called Kurdish terrorism.
On
March 23, a special edition of Erdogan’s semiofficial newspaper
The Star reports the bombings in Brussels by gloating: “Belgium
has been bitten by the snake she was feeding in her breast.” The
reference is to Erdogan’s earlierspeech of March 18, where he
developed the snake metaphor as a clear threat to Belgium.
Thierry
Meyssan reports from Damascus that Turkish President Erdogan is now
widely regarded as the prime suspect in the March 22 terrorist
bombing of Brussels, Belgium and its nearby airport. Meyssan also
points to emerging evidence that would implicate Erdogan in the Paris
massacre of last November 13.
The
new artificial state was to be called “Kurdistan,” but it was to
be located on Syrian territory stolen from that country. To populate
this new state, the Turkish government was preparing an enormous
campaign of ethnic cleansing, deportations, and expulsions designed
to expel virtually all Kurds from its territory.
One
of the groups most disadvantaged by this arrangement was the Syrian
Kurds, but they were able to fight back by defeating the ISIS
terrorists during the siege of Kobane, a Syrian Kurdish town on the
Turkish border. The during late 2014 and early 2015, the Kobane
Kurds, with some US air support, administered one of the first
defeats which the ISIS butchers had experienced. Because the YPG
Kurds have proven effective, the US decided to back them as a proxy
against ISIS. France, seeing the new US attitude, decided to delay
the implementation of the earlier “Kurdistan” plan, and maintain
alignment with Washington.
It
is now clear to many observers that the November 13, 2015 Paris
massacres represented the response of the Erdogan clique to these
developments. Erdogan had originally intended to use the Paris
massacres as a pretext for scapegoating the Kurds and beginning their
expulsion from Turkish territory. But, starting in October 2015, and
with the deployment of the Russian Air Force to Syrian bases, Erdogan
once again was forced to delay his “Kurdistan” scenario. Almost
as soon as the Russian planes arrived, the Turkish MIT secret
intelligence agency was widely blamed for the destruction of a
Russian commercial airliner over the Sinai district of Egypt. Then
there was the Turkish downing of a Russian Sukhoi jet fighter.
Erdogan was unable to see the initiative.
Now,
during March 2016, Russian President Putin has announced the
beginning of a gradual drawdown of Russian forces in Syria. But at
the same time, there is an understanding between Obama’s White
House and Putin’s Kremlin that everyone must be ousted as the
president of Turkey.
Meyssan
confirmed last week’s reports that Russian and US weapons are now
flowing into the hands of the YPG Syrian Kurds, the victors of Kobane
and other recent actions. Some of these weapons are being passed on
by the YPG into the hands of the PKK, a Kurdish group, which operates
inside Turkey, and which Ankara insists on defining as terrorist.
In
the meantime, Erdogan’s blackmail of the European Union over the
issue of refugees fleeing from the Syrian war zone has proven
successful in the form of an EU commitment to pay €3 billion per
year to Erdogan. The money is allegedly to be used to defray the
expenses of housing large numbers of Syrian refugees in Anatolia, but
it is an open secret that this money will be used by Erdogan to
finance the continuation of ISIS operations in Iraq and Syria.
Terrorist
attacks took place inside Turkey, on March 13 in Ankara and on March
19 in Istanbul.
March
18, if the Turkish President delivered a special address for the
101st anniversary of the Anglo-French operation against Gallipoli
during World War I. Here Erdogan made a public show of indignation
about a recent demonstration by pro-Kurdish groups in Brussels,
Belgium, during last week’s EU-Turkish refugee summit there, an
action which sought to focus public attention on Turkish human rights
abuses.
Accusing
the European Union, and especially Belgium of supporting the PKK,
Erdogan claimed that the EU and Belgium were themselves terrorists
“There
is no reason why the bomb that exploded in Ankara cannot explode in
Brussels, in any other European city,” raved Erdogan; “The snakes
you are sleeping with can bite you any time.”
Note
that this represented a direct threat of terrorist violence against
Brussels and Belgium just four days before the actual Brussels
bombing. On this basis alone, Erdogan would have to be considered the
prime suspect.
The
during the days after the Brussels terror bombing, Turkish newspapers
controlled by the Erdogan faction is celebrated what they called the
“punishment” of Belgium up by the very terror groups, which had
been harbored there.
European
leaders remain willfully blind to the real activities of Erdogan and
his supporters. The Turkish President is reported to regard the Turks
as a master race destined to rule the world. That is his idea of the
Caliphate.
Western
police and intelligence agencies need to direct special scrutiny
towards the Millî Görüs (National Vision) organization, which is
especially active among the Turkish diaspora. Erdogan is thought to
direct many of the activities of this group.
Erdogan
also controls Hizb ut Tahrir (Party of Liberation), an international
Pan-Islamist group dedicated to the reconstitution of the Caliphate
under Sharia Law and the subsequent conquest of the entire world.
These
groups, together with the Moslem Brotherhood (Ikhwan) itself can all
be mobilized by Erdogan as a terrorist trifecta for his projects of
jihad, intimidation, and aggression.
In
another disturbing development, the Turkish dictator is identifying
himself more and more with figures from the history of Central Asia
like Attila the Hun and Genghis Khan.
Webster
G. Tarpley
Listen
to World Crisis Radio – 26 March, 2016 HERE
Today’s
broadcast features a report from Thierry Meyssan in Damascus, Syria,
which can be summarized as follows:
The
press of Europe and the United States is attempting to spread the
idea that the withdrawal of part of the contingent of Russian
military aircraft which had been assigned to bombing terrorist
targets in Syria somehow came as a surprise, including to the Assad
government in Damascus. In reality, there was no surprise whatsoever.
It had been assumed that the Russian bombing campaign against the
Syrian terrorist rebels was scheduled to end in the first week of
January, at about the time of the Orthodox Christmas. At that time,
President Assad visited Moscow and it was decided to extend the
bombing campaign until mid March.
This plan was confirmed for the
Syrian government by the Russian Foreign Ministry as of March 1.
Russian troops inside Syria were well aware of their departure date.
Large Antonov military transports were used to move some equipment
back to Russia, and flight plans for these aircraft were given four
days in advance to the competent authorities. This is confirmed by
Defense News, which quotes the Jordanian chief of staff saying that
he was informed by Moscow and by the Syrian government. So there was
no precipitate withdrawal, but rather a carefully planned and
executed redeployment.
Especially
important is the agreement reached by Presidents Obama and Putin
about two or three weeks ago that the continued tenure of Turkish
President Erdogan is intolerable, and that he should be removed from
office before he can start a wider war. Russian and US weapons are
currently flowing into Turkey for the purpose of speeding the
departure of the dictator. Contacts are also being made with the
Turkish political parties, the top generals of the Turkish military,
and others to help bring down the dictator. The Turkish nationalists
are turning against Erdogan. The PKK will also mobilize. Erdogan’s
presidency is illegitimate because his most recent election victory
was carried out with massive vote fraud.
Fighting
inside Turkey on the level of a civil war is expected to begin during
April. The beginning of the end for Erdogan will transform the entire
Middle East situation.
Most
of the larger cities in Syria will soon be free of terrorist rebels.
This is likely to include Aleppo, Palmyra, and Idlib. ISIS/Daesh will
only be able to maintain their presence in Raqqa in far northeast
Syria, as well as in some parts of Iraq. It is expected that heavy
fighting inside Turkey will tend to disrupt the logistics pipeline
for the terrorist rebels inside Syria.
This
hard line of Moscow and Washington towards Erdogan contrasts most
sharply with the policy of the European Union (including Britain and
France), which is offering tribute of €3 billion per year to
Erdogan over the foreseeable future to get the Turkish president to
house more Syrian refugees and to prevent them from crossing into
Greece. Naturally, since Erdogan functions as the de facto commander
of ISIS/Daesh, he could at any time order the total cessation of
combat operations, and remove the main factor which is impelling
civilians to flee from the terrorists in the combat zones. But he
prefers to cash in, obtaining concessions like visa-free travel for
Turks in the EU.
Obama’s
interview to the Atlantic Monthly is remarkable since it reads like
the memoirs of a president who has already left office, and thus
feels free to frankly speak his mind. His comments about King Salman
of Saudi Arabia, Sarkozy, Cameron, and Erdogan are devastating. The
message seems to be that these figures are being told to cooperate,
or else they will be exposed for their machinations of recent years,
and thus destabilized.
Prince
Turki of Saudi Arabia, who sometimes acts as a spokesman for the
Royal family, has issued a weak defense (see below) claiming that the
Saudis do not support terrorism, and are loyal allies.
Obama
has been quoted as saying that the Saudi royals are the worst in the
world. The situation is complicated by the distinct possibility that
the Saudis have obtained nuclear weapons from Pakistan.
Obama’s
Atlantic interview portrays Hillary Clinton as a relentless warmonger
– Democratic primary voters should take note. The Washington think
tanks and experts are frequently bought and paid for by the Sunni
Arab states.
Here
are some excerpts from Obama’s interview, which appears in Jeffrey
Goldberg, “The Obama Doctrine: The U.S. president talks through his
hardest decisions about America’s role in the world,” Atlantic
Monthly, April 2016:
Over
the past year, John Kerry has visited the White House regularly to
ask Obama to violate Syria’s sovereignty. On several occasions,
Kerry has asked Obama to launch missiles at specific regime targets,
under cover of night, to “send a message” to the regime. The
goal, Kerry has said, is not to overthrow Assad but to encourage him,
and Iran and Russia, to negotiate peace….Obama has steadfastly
resisted Kerry’s requests, and seems to have grown impatient with
his lobbying. In recent National Security Council meetings, Obama’s
strategy was occasionally referred to as the “Tom Sawyer approach.”
Obama’s view was that if Putin wanted to expend his regime’s
resources by painting the fence in Syria, the U.S. should let him. By
late winter, though, when it appeared that Russia was making advances
in its campaign to solidify Assad’s rule, the White House began
discussing ways to deepen support for the rebels, though the
president’s ambivalence about more-extensive engagement remained.
Obama
would say privately that the first task of an American president in
the post-Bush international arena was “Don’t do stupid shit.”
Obama’s reticence frustrated [Samantha] Power and others on his
national-security team who had a preference for action. Hillary
Clinton, when she was Obama’s secretary of state, argued for an
early and assertive response to Assad’s violence. In 2014, after
she left office, Clinton told me that “the failure to help build up
a credible fighting force of the people who were the originators of
the protests against Assad … left a big vacuum, which the jihadists
have now filled.” When The Atlantic published this statement, and
also published Clinton’s assessment that “great nations need
organizing principles, and?‘Don’t do stupid stuff’ is not an
organizing principle,”
Obama became “rip-shit angry,” according
to one of his senior advisers. The president did not understand how
“Don’t do stupid shit” could be considered a controversial
slogan. Ben Rhodes recalls that “the questions we were asking in
the White House were ‘Who exactly is in the stupid-shit caucus? Who
is pro–stupid shit?’?” The Iraq invasion, Obama believed,
should have taught Democratic interventionists like Clinton, who had
voted for its authorization, the dangers of doing stupid shit.
(Clinton quickly apologized to Obama for her comments, and a Clinton
spokesman announced that the two would “hug it out” on Martha’s
Vineyard when they crossed paths there later.).
‘Friday,
August 30, 2013[:] ….While the Pentagon and the White House’s
national-security apparatuses were still moving toward war (John
Kerry told me he was expecting a strike the day after his speech),
the president had come to believe that he was walking into a trap—one
laid both by allies and by adversaries, and by conventional
expectations of what an American president is supposed to do. In
Situation Room meetings that followed the attack on Ghouta, only the
White House chief of staff, Denis McDonough, cautioned explicitly
about the perils of intervention. John Kerry argued vociferously for
action.”
[Samantha]
Power sometimes argued with Obama in front of other National Security
Council officials, to the point where he could no longer conceal his
frustration. “Samantha, enough, I’ve already read your book,”
he once snapped. …Biden, who ordinarily shared Obama’s worries
about American overreach, argued passionately that “big nations
don’t bluff.”
[Cameron
of the UK and Saudi Ambassador Jubeir demanded an attack. But
Germany’s Merkel was opposed and refused to take part. When the
British House of Commons also refused to go along, Obama paused.]
Obama
also shared with McDonough a long-standing resentment: He was tired
of watching Washington unthinkingly drift toward war in Muslim
countries. Four years earlier, the president believed, the Pentagon
had “jammed” him on a troop surge for Afghanistan. Now, on Syria,
he was beginning to feel jammed again.
The
prime minister of France, Manuel Valls, told me that his government
was already worried about the consequences of earlier inaction in
Syria when word came of the stand-down. “By not intervening early,
we have created a monster,” Valls told me. “We were absolutely
certain that the U.S. administration would say yes. Working with the
Americans, we had already seen the targets. It was a great surprise.
If we had bombed as was planned, I think things would be different
today.” The crown prince of Abu Dhabi, Mohammed bin Zayed
al-Nahyan, who was already upset with Obama for “abandoning”
Hosni Mubarak, the former president of Egypt, fumed to American
visitors that the U.S. was led by an “untrustworthy” president.
The king of Jordan, Abdullah II—already dismayed by what he saw as
Obama’s illogical desire to distance the U.S. from its traditional
Sunni Arab allies and create a new alliance with Iran, Assad’s Shia
sponsor—complained privately, “I think I believe in American
power more than Obama does.” The Saudis, too, were infuriated. They
had never trusted Obama—he had, long before he became president,
referred to them as a “so-called ally” of the U.S. “Iran is the
new great power of the Middle East, and the U.S. is the old,”
Jubeir, the Saudi ambassador in Washington, told his superiors in
Riyadh.
Amid
the confusion, a deus ex machina appeared in the form of the Russian
president, Vladimir Putin. At the G20 summit in St. Petersburg, which
was held the week after the Syria reversal, Obama pulled Putin aside,
he recalled to me, and told the Russian president “that if he
forced Assad to get rid of the chemical weapons, that that would
eliminate the need for us taking a military strike.” Within weeks,
Kerry, working with his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, would
engineer the removal of most of Syria’s chemical-weapons arsenal—a
program whose existence Assad until then had refused to even
acknowledge.
This
was the moment the president believes he finally broke with what he
calls, derisively, the “Washington playbook.” I have come to
believe that, in Obama’s mind, August 30, 2013, was his liberation
day, the day he defied not only the foreign-policy establishment and
its cruise-missile playbook, but also the demands of America’s
frustrating, high-maintenance allies in the Middle East—countries,
he complains privately to friends and advisers, that seek to exploit
American “muscle” for their own narrow and sectarian ends. By
2013, Obama’s resentments were well developed. He resented military
leaders who believed they could fix any problem if the commander in
chief would simply give them what they wanted, and he resented the
foreign-policy think-tank complex. A widely held sentiment inside the
White House is that many of the most prominent foreign-policy think
tanks in Washington are doing the bidding of their Arab and
pro-Israel funders. I’ve heard one administration official refer to
Massachusetts Avenue, the home of many of these think tanks, as
“Arab-occupied territory.” [Leon Panetta was another hawk.]
He
described a relationship with Putin that doesn’t quite conform to
common perceptions. I had been under the impression that Obama viewed
Putin as nasty, brutish, and short. But, Obama told me, Putin is not
particularly nasty. “The truth is, actually, Putin, in all of our
meetings, is scrupulously polite, very frank. Our meetings are very
businesslike. He never keeps me waiting two hours like he does a
bunch of these other folks.” Obama said that Putin believes his
relationship with the U.S. is more important than Americans tend to
think. “He’s constantly interested in being seen as our peer and
as working with us, because he’s not completely stupid. He
understands that Russia’s overall position in the world is
significantly diminished. Obama’s theory here is simple: Ukraine is
a core Russian interest but not an American one, so Russia will
always be able to maintain escalatory dominance there.
Right
after Obama’s reversal, Hillary Clinton said privately, “If you
say you’re going to strike, you have to strike. There’s no
choice.”
Here
is Prince Turki’s attempted defense of the Kingdom:
‘A
top Saudi Arabian intelligence chief said on Monday that President
Barack Obama failed to appreciate all that the kingdom has done to
stabilize the Middle East, fight terrorism and support American
priorities, hitting back after the president called Middle Eastern
governments “free riders” on US initiatives. “You accuse us of
fomenting sectarian strife in Syria, Yemen and Iraq,” Turki
al-Faisal, a Saudi prince and former ambassador to the United States
and Britain, wrote in an open letter published Monday in the
English-language Arab News. “You add insult to injury by telling us
to share our world with Iran, a country that you describe as a
supporter of terrorism.” Al-Faisal’s letter was a response to
comments Obama made in a much-discussed interview with The Atlantic
magazine in which Obama referred to the Saudis and other allies as
“free riders” who push the United States to act but contribute
little themselves. Obama has long been cooler toward the Saudis and
other Arab allies than his predecessor, but his willingness to
forcefully criticize them stunned many in Washington’s foreign
policy establishment.’
Posts
“